The Venetian Room, 2016, Kate Bergin
Oil on canvas, 170cm x 200cm
Provenance: Mossgreen, Melbourne.
Kate Bergin has had a highly successful career spanning three decades - her works revel in the unusual, the precarious and the unexpected. Her still lifes, are far from still. Bright and alive, with light and movement. Animals and birds ready to leap off the canvas. Bergin has been the recipient of a number of major awards, including the Albany Art Prize, The Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize (Highly Commended), the Arthur Guy Memorial Art Prize (People’s Choice) and was a finalist in the 2011 and 2013 Sulman Prize (1).
The Venetian Room was painted in 2016 as part of Kate Bergin’s ‘Tabletop Variations’. It continues Bergin’s focus on the ‘un-still life’. The lion as a centrepiece, displaced from its usual habitat, paired with animals and birds from other continents rest peacefully in the tableau. Telephones, teaspoons and spectacles function as visual metonyms for ‘civilised’ society. Bergin’s animals chisel a chink in this armature of civilisation, evoking the wilderness that dwells beneath. The tabletop acts as a stage upon which she moves creatures around to create a believable space with convincing relationships (2).